When the PNM first took of­fice last year, their vic­to­ry co­in­cid­ed in an up­surge of "gang ac­tiv­i­ty" that was at­trib­uted to the hon­ey­moon pe­ri­od grant­ed to new ad­min­is­tra­tions. As time went by how­ev­er, it was clear that a sin­gle Min­is­ter was not suf­fi­cient to deal with the sit­u­a­tion and as­sis­tance was pro­vid­ed to him in the form of a Ju­nior Min­is­ter and Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary, who were each as­signed spe­cif­ic func­tions to en­sure max­i­mum ef­fec­tive­ness.

Need­less to say how­ev­er, this move did noth­ing to curb the es­ca­la­tion of crime, and in fact the rates of all forms of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty have been steadi­ly climb­ing. And that's the part of this equa­tion that the gov­ern­ment have not no­ticed.

Dur­ing the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship term in gov­ern­ment, they were of­ten chas­tised and de­rid­ed for pub­lish­ing sta­tis­tics on crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty. But de­spite a nom­i­nal but dis­cernible re­duc­tion in the mur­der rate dur­ing their tenure, it was the shrink­age of oth­er se­ri­ous crimes that was most note­wor­thy, and this is the re­ver­sal that we are wit­ness­ing to­day. Be­tween 2009 to 2013, in­stances of se­ri­ous crime re­port­ed­ly de­creased by forty-two per­cent, which in­clud­ed in­ci­dents of theft, kid­nap­pings, rape and drug-re­lat­ed of­fences. Since the PNM took of­fice how­ev­er, and es­pe­cial­ly since the be­gin­ning of 2016, there has been an ev­i­dent turn-around of these cas­es re­sult­ing in an in­crease of these types of crimes.

What's more, is that de­spite the PNM's ini­tial de­c­la­ra­tion that the spike in the mur­der rate and oth­er crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty was a re­sult of gang war­fare, it is clear to us now that the in­flux in crime is be­ing caused by its at­trac­tion to per­sons who find them­selves in des­per­ate po­si­tions, who feel that they have no oth­er al­ter­na­tives to sur­vive.

While the crim­i­nal en­ter­prise has long preyed on the for­lorn to fill their ranks, the in­creas­ing num­ber of these per­sons that are now avail­able for re­cruit­ment means that the in­dus­try finds it­self with enough hu­man cap­i­tal to flour­ish and ex­pand un­re­strict­ed. As such, and with the co­in­cid­ing of sev­er­al re­cent sui­cides as well, it seems that the on­ly com­pe­ti­tion that these crim­i­nal op­er­a­tions have for their forces is the an­gel of death, who of­fers them re­lease them from their mis­ery and suf­fer­ing.

Ravi Ma­haraj